Wanting Sheila Dead (15 page)

“Here we are,” Billie said.

She opened a heavy swinging door, and behind it Gregor found the people he had been missing up to now. There was a wide curved desk that was the main anchor for the nurse's station. Behind it stood another nun in a pants suit, except hers was a standard nursing uniform and she wasn't wearing a veil of any kind. There were also two more women, also in uniforms, probably not nuns.

“It's too bad about the nuns,” Billie said suddenly. “They used to be able to staff this entire hospital with Sisters of Mercy—well, almost the entire hospital. Nursing staff. Even some of the doctors, lots of the clerical people. The nuns worked for ten dollars a month and the medical bills were low or nonexistent to anybody who came through the doors and couldn't pay for it. And then suddenly there were no more nuns.”

“I know somebody who can spend a fair amount of time talking about that,” Gregor said. “She's an—extern sister, I think it's called. For a Carmelite monastery out on Hardscrabble Road.”

“Oh, I know that one,” Billie said. “I've seen them. It's like watching an old movie.”

The nun at the nurse's station looked up and saw them. She came out from around the desk. “Officer Ormonds,” she said. “This must be Gregor Demarkian.”

“That's him,” Billie said.

The nun had no sense of humor, and she wasn't interested in introducing herself. “Dr. Halevy is in with the patient. I've asked her to take this meeting into a conference room. There's one at the far end of the hall. Mrs. Mgrdchian is stable, but there's always the problem with comatose patients that you don't know what they're able to hear. We like to think that they're just dead to the world, so to speak, without actually being dead, but many of them can hear everything that goes on around them.”

The nun was pumping down the hall as she talked, and Gregor and Billie were following her. Gregor was getting a little breathless. The nun stopped.

“Here is is,” she said. “We've got her alone down here until we're sure of what the situation is. We don't want to upset other patients if there needs to be a police presence. Please don't stay too long in the room, and please don't discuss the particulars of the case—the police case or the medical case—where she can possibly hear you. Even if you think she can't hear you. Is that clear?”

“Of course,” Billie said.

The woman was chirping. Gregor almost laughed.

The nun looked dubious, then turned around and headed back down the hall. Billie opened the door to Sophie Mgrdchian's hospital room.

“Old bat,” Billie said cheerfully. “She didn't decide to give Mrs. Mgrdchian a private room and neither did the hospital. We insisted on it. Come in and meet Dr. Halevy.”

Gregor walked into the hospital room and looked around. It was a small room, but big enough to hold several chairs as well as Sophie
Mgrdchian's bed. Sophie lay on her back with her head on a pillow and the top half of the bed raised just a little. There was a tube in her arm, but nothing else. Gregor was a little surprised. He'd expected a lot more technology.

A tall woman looked up from Sophie's bedside and then came around to greet them. Dr. Halevy was as middle aged and thick as Billie Ormonds, but her hair was pulled back tightly on her head, and she was wearing a stethoscope.

“Mr. Demarkain,” she said. “Right on time. You have no idea what a relief that is. Hello, Billie. It's good to see you again.”

“Actually,” Billie said, “she wishes she'd never have to see me again. But that's only because she hates police work.”

“I don't hate police work,” Dr. Halevy said. “I hate crime. You'd think with all the pain and suffering in the world, people would refrain from causing it when it wasn't necessary. And it isn't necessary, pretty much ever, as far as I can tell.”

“Police have to hurt suspects sometimes,” Gregor started.

Dr. Halevy waved this away. “You know what I mean. I'm not talking about the police.” She gestured back to Sophie. “She's all right for the moment. The nurses have orders to check in on her at least once very fifteen minutes. Let's go out in the hall for a moment.”

“I thought there was some kind of conference room,” Gregor said.

“There's a conference room if you want it,” Dr. Halevy said, ushering them all out into the corridor, “but I don't really know if we need one. I mean, I've got only one thing to say, and it doesn't mean anything, if you believe Billie here. It can't be used in court, or something.”

“It just doesn't tell me anything,” Billie said mildly.

“What is it?” Gregor said.

“What it is,” Dr. Halevy said, “is that I have absolutely no idea what happened here. Not one. I've got no idea why this woman is unconscious or how she got that way. I've done all the usual tox screens. Nothing. We've checked heart and lungs. Nothing. We've checked for cancer. Nothing. There's no sign she's ever had a stroke. There's no sign
she's ever had a heart attack. There's no sign of
anything at all.
It's like voodoo.”

In an Agatha Christie mystery, what was happening to Sophie Mgrdchian would be discovered to be a secret poison—or maybe not so secret, because in spite of the clichés, Dame Agatha didn't really go in for the more esoteric stuff. She'd have thought of something else, something closer to home. Gregor could not, for the life of him, imagine what it would be.

Instead, he found himself walking down City Ave after his talk with Dr. Halevy, passing the edge of St. Joseph's University and thinking that he'd soon be at the place where City Ave went to hell after dark. For all he knew, it might go to hell in the daytime, too. He ought to get a cab and get back to Cavanaugh Street.

Instead, he got out his cell phone. He had to be careful with it. For the first six weeks he'd had it, he hadn't been able to pick it up without “launching the browser,” which apparently meant getting on the Internet. From his phone. Here was something else Dame Agatha hadn't had to contend with. Still, Miss Marple would not have objected. Miss Marple believed in accepting change and embracing progress, one way or the other.

He was standing on City Ave, thinking about Jane Marple as if she were a real human being. Tibor was getting to him. Tibor thought of all fictional characters as human beings, even if they were hobbits.

Bennis had set up his speed dial list. All he had to do was remember the number he'd given to David Mortimer. Eventually, he gave up trying to remember and just looked at the list instead. The list was interesting. Bennis had given herself the number 3. She'd given Tibor number 1, and his doctor number 2. He'd have to talk to her about that.

He pressed down hard on the number 6 and then held the phone
to his ear to listen to it ring. He got David Mortimer on the first ring, which meant that Mortimer did without an assistant. When had they stopped calling them secretaries and started calling them assistants?

“I'm wandering around in the city,” Gregor told Mortimer, “and I was wondering if I could come over and talk about things for a bit. I've just been with Dr. Halevy.”

“Ah,” Mortimer said. “Yes, I talked to her this morning.”

“Well, there's that,” Gregor said. “And a few more things.”

“Come on over. Maybe we can go to lunch. I've been here since five-thirty and I'm dying.”

Gregor put the cell phone back in his pocket. He didn't like the fact that phones didn't just ring anymore. He was less attuned to the modern than Miss Jane Marple.

Ack,
he thought.

Then there was a cab, and he was raising his arm in the street and watching it slow down.

There was no murder, and therefore no murder mystery, and that mattered. But something was going on, and Gregor didn't like the way it felt, so he was here. Or something. Maybe he was just bored being without something professional to do.

Gregor watched the floors go by as the elevator went up and thought that he would have to poke his head in to say hello to the mayor before he left. He'd known John Jackman too long not to do that. Then the elevator stopped and the doors slid open, and David Mortimer was right out there in the hall, waiting for him.

“Mr. Demarkian,” he said. “Come on back with me for a while. I've got some information printing out for you.”

“As far as I can tell, there isn't any information,” Gregor said. “At least there isn't any from the doctor. Is there anything about this Lily woman?”

“Not really.” David Mortimer was moving fast. Gregor watched
offices go by, and then a big office full of cubicles, and then a little door at the end. Mortimer opened that door and ushered Gregor into a space that must once have been a biggish closet. It did not have a window.

There was a visitor's chair. Gregor sat in it. Mortimer sat behind the desk and looked into the little tray of the printer.

“Here we are,” he said, picking up a little pile of papers. “And in case you're wondering, yes, this was indeed a closet. But the mayor wanted his special liaison to have an office, not a cubicle, so here we are.”

“That's what your title is? Special Liaison?”

“Yeah. Personally, I think Mr. Jackman just likes the word ‘liaison.' You've known him forever, haven't you?”

“Something like that.” Gregor did not say, “He dated my wife before I did,” because he found that idea uncomfortable.

Mortimer placed the papers on the desk as close to Gregor as he could get them. “We've done a preliminary search for the two brothers,” he said, “given the information you've given us. And for the niece, I think you said she was. So far, we don't have much, but then we don't have much, if you know what I mean. We've asked for a search warrant so that we can go into the house and look through the papers there to find some clue to where the rest of the woman's family is, but it's harder to get warrants like that than you'd think. There are privacy concerns, and legal concerns, and constitutional concerns. You weren't really serious when you suggested that we just let this, um, this Mrs.—”

“Vardanian,” Gregor said.

“Vardanian,” Mortimer said. “You didn't really mean we should turn a blind eye to her going into the house and rooting around?”

“No,” Gregor said. “Not really. But she suggested it, and I thought I should pass it along. She's—maybe I should say understandably concerned.”

“Yes, well,” Mortimer said. “Look. If this Mrs. Mgrdchian were any younger, we'd probably have homicide detectives assigned to the
case already. Not that there's been a homicide, but we don't really know that there hasn't been an attempted one. This whole thing gets odder the longer it goes on. We did check the public records, and we have birth data on Sophie and Viktor Mgrdchian and draft information on Viktor and his two brothers, plus records of the baptism, but not the birth, of a Clarice Ann Mgrdchian, who seems to have been Marco's daughter. But Clarice Ann couldn't be Lily. She's too young by nearly thirty years.”

“And you don't know where she is?”

“We've got a couple of people working the Internet,” Mortimer said, “but it's not as easy as you think, especially when you don't really know where to start geographically. And we don't know. Those women you sent us to are very sharp, sharper than I expect to be at their age, but they don't really know anything. Seeing somebody at a funeral more than a decade ago isn't—”

“Yes, I know,” Gregor said. “What about Lily herself? I understand that the thing with the fingerprints isn't really all that unusual, but—”

“It's not unusual for homeless people,” Mortimer said. “They burn themselves. They cut themselves. Sometimes accidentally and sometimes on purpose. We run into it every winter when the cold hits and we have to try to identify the one or two who always die. Our problem here, of course, is that this Lily woman didn't seem to be homeless. She was too clean—”

“Yes, I thought about that,” Gregor said. “Maybe Sophie Mgrdchian saw her homeless and took her in.”

“Was Mrs. Mgrdchian like that?” Mortimer asked. “Because I'm not saying it's impossible, but I am saying that it's unlikely. Homeless people tend to be scary for reasons other than the ordinary citizen's prejudices. A lot of them are alcohol or drug addicted, and addicted people are volatile and unpredictable. A lot of them are mentally ill, and they're even more volatile and unpredictable.”

“That's what we're assuming here, aren't we? That Lily is mentally ill?”

“I guess. But she's not mentally ill the way homeless people are usually mentally ill. She's not belligerent. She comes with us when we ask
her to. She obedient and mild mannered and not at all violent. She wouldn't last half a day like that living on the street, not most places in this city. And I'll tell you what. We've never picked her up before.”

“Picked her up?” Gregor asked.

“For causing a public nuisance, or something like that. We do keep records when we have to send the police to get homeless people out of stores or other places where they cause disturbances. A lot of them use the libraries in the winter, and if they stay out of the way and don't get loud or smell too bad, we don't bother them. The librarians don't want us to bother them. But some of them go into libraries and bring up porn on the machines and, uh, well—”

“Masturbate,” Gregor said.

“Yeah,” Mortimer said. “That. They do that. Not the women, usually, though. Or they smell so bad it isn't possible to get near them. Or they start shouting and threatening people. Mostly people who aren't there, but still. And we've never picked her up for anything like that. Of course, if she was as clean and as quiet as she is now, we wouldn't have been asked to pick her up, but then she couldn't have been homeless. She'd have had to have someplace to go to wash.”